"Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." Earl Nightingale

Mathieu Desmarais always knew that ‘doing business of his own’ is what he is made for. He began his business journey as a teenager by supplying sports good from US to Canada, an experience that taught him various constraints associated with international business dealings.

Constantly using his business initiatives as stepping stones, in May 2011 he finally turned his dream of becoming an established entrepreneur into reality with the launch of NPM Technologies, a Bangalore based web & mobile application development firm. A few years later, in June 2015, Mathieu came up with another entrepreneurialinitiative called RecurRex.

RecurRex helps ecommerce businesses digitize their repeat purchases or subscriptions to save them time and recurring efforts. RecurRex is set to acquire 200 new clients in next two years working towards its goal to digitize recurring purchases in India.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

RecurRex is a subscription eCommerceSaaS for Indian businesses. It allows new and existing eCommerce websites with current or prospective subscription potential to automate recurring billing and payments. It also provides tools and actionable data for subscription marketing and delivery management.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

Our first interaction with subscription eCommerce happened in early 2014, when NPM Technologies, our parent company, was hired by a group of Miami-based French entrepreneurs to develop a subscription box website. Later that year, following a brainstorming session, RecurRex came to life.

Convincing subscription commerce entrepreneurs of the benefits of going with RecurRex vs. building their own platform.In India, and more specifically in Bangalore where we are based, skilled IT professionals, entrepreneurs believe it’ll be easy to build such a solution and that they’ll be better off building it themselves. We know what it is to build a web application from scratch, it’s hundreds of hours of development and lakhs of investment. With our monthly, per active user billing system and low initial fees, we allow such startups to invest in marketing instead of technology, and to launch a subscription eCommerce in a few days with minimal risk.

How did you overcome those challenges?

We make a strong case, play the numbers game and have excellent sales team.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

We’ve received seed investment in October last year, and are currently seeking Angel investment.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

In Bangalore, talent usually stays for a little longer than a year in a company. It is something we have experienced in the past with NPM Technologies, and of course we aren’t entirely protected. Being aware of it, knowing who are our key team members, what are their roles and skills, and having a plan as to what will happen if they leave is the first part. We make sure to retain as much knowledge as we can that is external to the talents by documenting our work. Then, we need to understand, through open and honest communication, what it is that makes them stay with us, what motivates them, and tailor our compensation and their role for them. We are working on profit-sharing incentives and make sure our team feel invested in the success of RecurRex. We have a lot of room for career and skills advancement within the company as well.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

Drive, accountability and passion.

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

HubSpot’s CRM, GitHub, Skype/Slack, Google Analytics, Wave

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

Making a to-do list for the week and for each day of it. It helps to get a better outlook of the work to do, the priorities, and as well as helps in sticking to them.

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

I often keep working even when I’m not productive, instead of taking a 15 minutes break to refresh and start stronger.

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success

Surround yourself with people who are better than you who will help you challenge yourself.

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid

Being too rigid about your ideas. You are going to learn and evolve, and the environment you are in evolves also, so what may have been a great idea 6 months ago might not be anymore.

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now

Follow your guts, you’ll end up regretting not doing so.

What are your plans for next 3 years?

We plan on automating recurring purchases in India. Considering this, we are now planning to onboard 200 businesses in the next 24 months (40 in the next 12), develop new ways of deploying a subscription store (plugins for Magento, WooCommerce, Prestashop, etc.), create marketing tools and analytics for subscription businesses and automate recurring transactions even more with IoT. We believe it will take two years for the market to expand into its full potential in India, and our plans are to eventually expand into southeast Asia.

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?

Give more importance to mentors right from its start.

What are your top three getaway destinations?

Australia, Coorg, and Goa!

Share a quote that inspires you the most.

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” Earl Nightingale

Thank you Sapan for the opportunity to share our own success story with your readers! We hope to inspire them to write their own, and why not with RecurRex. India has the second largest number of subscription commerce startups after the US, the potential of this market is huge!